Electroacoustic & Beyond vol.4 Various Artists

Sk(etch) is an acousmatic work that explores sounds, gestures, textures, and timbres associated with the creative process of sketching, drawing, writing, and composing.

Performed by Joey Speranzo (alto saxophone).

The work begins with an explosion of electronic sounds. The fixed media component for Machine consists of mechanical and metal sound samples. These are manipulated until they are digitally distorted in various ways to create a contrast with their unaltered versions. The rawness of the gestures and the prominent pitches of those noises become the musical material exploited by the saxophonist. The saxophone begins by exploring this space as the variety of electronic sounds begin to coalesce. As the piece progresses, the saxophone exerts some of its own agency, and the electronics begin to be influenced by this. This conflict and cooperation propel the piece forward by exploring the chaotic spectrum in between, reflecting the influences exchanged between humans and machines.

Performed by Duo Contracello

In astronomy and physical cosmology, dark energy is a form of energy still unknown and believed to fill the entire space of the universe, causing the acceleration of its expansion, from the initial Big Bang to the infinite future. Dark Energy aims to be a dark and energetic work. This piece was commissioned by the Contracello Duo.

Performed by Robin Bier (voice), Maeghan Dineen.

“Evangelium Campane” combines field recordings with text to make a unique electroacoustic piece whose aim is to give a new musical value to the church bells of York, and to also present the audience with some of the different historical perspectives of the bells throughout their existence in England.  The composer's challenge when creating the piece was to use high quality audio with sparing effects. By placing microphones in intimate recording spaces, sometimes requiring the composer to crawl into the snug spaces of a belfry, Ms Dineed was able to capture noises not easily heard by the human ears. Other recording locations were inside of the church itself, outside in the church graveyard (usually at night!), and then from a mile away in the distance. By minimally processing the recordings the composer wanted to preserve the identity of the sound of the bells which hold great history and because each bell has a sound unique to itself.

The composition was supported by the Austrian federal state of Styria.

Matters from Materia (lat., substance, cause) – what other, than sound, could be the matter of music? As Gérard Grisey: " ... our model is sound not literature, sound not mathematics, sound not theatre, visual arts, quantum physics, geology, astrology or acupuncture." With this work the composer explores the possibilities and malleability, owed to the computer, which open so many doors as hardly anything else in the history of music.

This work was sponsored by University of Washington Trombone Ensemble.

Four Desultory Episodes for Oboe and Fixed Media (1973) is the composer's first attempt at combining live and taped sounds. New oboe techniques utilized include multiphonics, timbre trills, pitch bending, and alternating trill fingerings. Each episode explores a "mood" and a facet of the oboe's "personality" as the composer perceives it. The tape, realized at the Michigan State University Electronic Studio, acts as a background "wash" against which the oboe plays. Sounds were mainly realized on a Putney with a few sounds from the Moog. The episodes are titled Anomaly, Sonance, Keen, and Paroxysm.

The expression "banlieue cuivrée" comes from the will to represent the life of a cement magma and its morphing and dynamics fluctuations, its slackening and also its static poses sublimated in the urban architectonic context. The composition has been built using exclusively concrete samples of metallophones and membranophones instruments. Since brass is the dominant metal colour in the musical context, hence the second French term cuivrée.